


I Remember A Shadow

by trix_lyesmith



Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies), norse fiction
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 12:46:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trix_lyesmith/pseuds/trix_lyesmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short fic about Shadow lying in wait for Loki's return, hearing about Thor's arrival in New York and heading there, and finding himself in the midst of the Avengers' battle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Remember A Shadow

A plate landed on the table.  
A polystyrene cup quickly followed, and he watched as the steam rose up ethereally from the surface of the dark liquid.

Sitting alone in a secluded booth, Shadow gingerly sipped at his coffee. It was weak and had a flat and unusual taste. He pushed it away from him toward the edge of the table, keeping it at arms length.

He’d been searching for so long that he’d almost always forgotten to eat. Looking for anywhere Chaos hung its hat.  
And here he was, finally, in New York, where chaos currently reigned. 

A television set cradled on the wall behind the bar was tuned in to some sort of twenty-our hour news channel. The layouts of the reports were just as chaotic as the streets outside. One minute they would be following a pretty young girl in a pant-suit, running from a blast and shouting into a camera with an oversized microphone. Then they would lose the feed, often mid-sentence, and cut to a twenty-something guy who had once been smartly dressed, but was now covered in brick dust and chunks of cement, whispering desperately into a camera as he crouched, terrified, hiding out in some abandoned shop front. Then they would inexplicably lose that feed and move onto the next unwitting victim.

“We’re seeing some sort of airborne… _craft_ …” stammered one bewildered journalist, his voice breaking up with the bad connection, and more than a little terror.

As Shadow tucked into his breakfast, he tuned in and out of the frantic reports from the plucky young journalists, who’d been thrown out onto the front lines because they were just green and desperate enough to need the boost in their career:

“..Nobody in this area seems to know _what_ is happening here Deborah...”  
“-People are being evacuated six blocks from Stark Tower…”  
“-Stark Tower is at the heart of all this, ladies and gentlemen, at the very centre…”  
“-Some sort of _beam_ of light just- shot into the sky, and then- then t-they just started… _coming_ …”  
“…From another world…”  
“…Aliens!”  
“Here’s a pictu- we apologise, it’s a little blurry – a picture of the person who seems to be the orchestrator of all of this…”  
“…People are saying he is in someway connected to Thor, but sources cannot confirm…”  
“… He’s flying one of their crafts - the aliens’ crafts!”  
“…Some sort of weapon… a sceptre?”  
“…And now they’re fighting! Ladies and Gentlemen, Thor is _fighting_ this ringleader on top of Stark tower!…”

Thor.

Just the man Shadow had come to seek out. 

Absent-mindedly he reached up and rubbed at the scar tissue that wrapped around his throat. Scars gifted to him by the rope from which he had once swung far above the Earth; the rope that had killed him. The rope that had brought him new life. 

They were brothers, he supposed – after a fashion, and he wanted answers. He stared back up at the screen awhile, his expression blank, and then they flashed up an image, clearer than the one before it.

“...And we believe...hold on- yes- we have a name!”

The face was one he instantly recognised.

“...At least two of the superheroes known as ‘The Avengers’ have been overheard calling him this..”  
“....Eyewitness who says the perpetrator is Thor’s _own_ brother...”

His eyes returned to his breakfast, but he’d felt the bile rise in his throat. It was the eyes. The eyes like fire.

“Loki...Loki...LOKI.”  
The TV echoed in the background, and Shadow’s fork paused halfway to his mouth.

“So…you’re back.”

Continuing to eat with his right hand he reached into his pocket with the left. His fingers brushed the coins sitting in the bottom. He let them jingle-jangle against one another. Just to check they were still there.

 _The battle will bring him back._  
The immortal words of Wednesday – Odin – had reverberated through his mind for long enough. Now they’d come true.

Watching the grainy footage of Loki, the God he’d watched die not so long ago, made his stomach all but leap out through his gullet. He’d suspected, with the arrival of Thor in New York, that Loki would be returning before long.  
 _Like a bad penny._  
He had had no delusions about his ex-cellmate being permanently dead.  
 _Nothin’ but coin tricks._ He mused as he chewed down his bacon.

He returned to his plate, cleared every mouthful of sausage and bacon and eggs, and in between hash browns he reflected on how much he wished Gods had stayed imaginary. 

He rested back against the foam padded seat, one hand curled around the warm coffee cup, the other draped over the arm rest.

The waitress had been watching him devour the entire meal. Now, as he finished chewing the last mouthful and clinked his cutlery onto the plate, she quickly approached him and spoke.  
“D-did you enjoy your meal?”  
“Delicious.”  
She pushed his empty dishes onto her tray, and wiped the table down with a greying dishcloth. Shadow noticed her hands were trembling like dandelions in a breeze.  
“Why are you shaking miss?” He asked her quietly.  
She stared at him, dumb for a moment, and then nodded toward the windows and replied, “t-there’s a war going on out there sir.”  
Shadow wiped his mouth on a napkin and put the screwed up tissue on top of her tray, then stood and shrugged on his coat.  
He drank down the dregs of his coffee, scrunched up the poly cup and aimed a throw at the trash can on his way out.  
“There’s always a war.”

Stepping out onto the pavement, warmed by the mid-morning sun, he remained calm but stepped out into chaos. All about him ran frenzied here and there, fleeing through the rubble-strewn streets. An acrid smell invaded his nostrils as the last few flames burnt steadily in scorched car-wrecks.

He listened to the screams drifting from a few blocks over. From this distance he could trick his mind into believing it were the sounds of some sort of fairground; the wailing sirens and the explosions could all be the sounds of hydraulic rides or special effects. But the flying alien craft and a glimpse of some leviathan flying creature broke the illusion, and within the screams he identified the harsh undercurrent of real fear.

He even, though he had to shake his head in astonishment, heard the sound of some enormous creature roaring with rage, and the high-pitched keening of a Stark-tech repulsor-blast…

The sounds reminded him of the battle he’d once been a part of; a battle between old gods and new. A chaos which Odin and Loki had constructed together.

He shook the sounds from his ears. 

_Lookout Mountain._

He turned in the direction of Stark tower, pulled his collar up against the breeze and placed one foot defiantly in front of the other.

 

He wasn’t going to play the fool again.

As far as he was concerned, that was a job for a trickster.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in the middle of re-reading American Gods, so apologies if anything seems a bit OOC for Shadow. 
> 
> This was a bit of a prompt which came from meeting someone new through a friend.


End file.
